The Fall 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Blue Box Season 2

High school boys' badminton team member Taiki Inomata is elated to learn that his long-time crush, girls' basketball team member Chinatsu Kano, is coming to live under his parents' roof after her own parents leave Japan for work. After rejecting classmate Hina Chono's confession of love for him, Taiki is now motivated to advance his relationship with Chinatsu. However, will either of their sporting ambitions come between them?

Blue Box Season 2 is based on the manga series by Kōji Miura. The anime series is streaming on Netflix on Sundays.

Blue Box is easily the best romantic drama to ever grace the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump, so I'm happy that the series has so far been graced with an equally strong anime adaptation—and that it's already back for another season. This is far from the first romance series to be blended together with a sports drama—or to have the romance side of that equation be bit of a slow burn—but Kōji Miura's ability to convey so much about her characters through natural interactions and subtle expressions is unmatched within the space of shonen manga. While the first season of the anime was a bit constrained with some of its animation, it more than made up for that deficiency with some stellar art direction. Despite some studio rebranding at TMS going on in between seasons, it so far looks as though those qualities are still intact, and even just within this first episode, there's plenty of individual shots that do a great job conveying a mood through nothing but facial expressions.

The plot of the episode drops us right in the middle of Taiki and Chinatsu finally going on a date, which is already a pretty big leg up from where they were for a lot of the first season, even if the mood here isn't exactly romantic. However none of that progress has fixed how bad each of them are at gauging how interested the other one is—and in Taili's case that's only further exaggerated when they end up running into Chinatsu's classmate Matsuoka, who does everything in his power to push Taiki to the side so he can have her to himself. Taiki at least manages to avoid taking any of this lying down and does his best to avoid being made into a third wheel on a date he was already on, but in the meantime Matsuoka twists the knife even further by forcing Taiki to question if he could even hope to balance dating Chinatsu with his currently floundering badminton career. Taiki's character has largely been defined by self-doubt. Having to deal with someone who's this much of an active heel is good in forcing him to learn how to assert himself more. But as great as that is for his development, it's still pretty aggravating to see this date get interrupted by someone so determined to ruin it. As necessary as Matsuoka's presence is, I do hope we don't have to see his face too often.

That said, it's also pretty clear from what we see from Chinatsu's point of view, that this date was already starting to go south anyway. Even though it's pretty clear at this stage that Chinatsu is also crushing on Taiki, she also still seems to be under the false impression that there's something going on between him and Hina. Even though she doesn't say as much out loud, the scene where she considers showing off a new outfit in front of Taiki only to hesitate when Hina's name comes up says everything we need to know about how she's feeling. If there was one real flaw with the first season, it was that the amount of time we spent seeing Taiki and Chinatsu's budding relationship from the latter's perspective was pretty limited, so I'm happy that this new season is already starting off by rectifying that. Moreover, we're bound to get a lot more of it now that one of Chinatsu's old teammates named Yumeka has waltzed back into her life—and doesn't seem pleased that Chinatsu might be putting love over basketball. It's a great way of kicking off this next leg of the story, and knowing what's coming next from the manga I'm pretty excited to see how Chinatsu develops over the course of the season. In the meantime though, it's great to have Blue Box back and whether you're here for the romance drama or the sports drama, you can still count on it to land all its shots

Blue Box could well be one of the most beautifully presented romantic dramas in the entire anime medium. The first season was already a feast for the eyes, but the second season's first episode aims to outdo everything it achieved before. From the gorgeous lighting to the vivid color scheme, every frame sings out, rejoicing in the care and attention lavished on the show. Netflix-subscribing fans of the genre are well served this season, with the return of The Ramparts of Ice as a perfect companion piece.

We pick up not long after last season's climactic rejection of Hina's confession by a conflicted Taiki. I remember feeling so sorry for her, but Taiki knows who he wants: Chinatsu. She's clearly interested in him too; otherwise, why would she have agreed to this date with him? The whole time, Taiki's psyching himself up to confess his own feelings, and he keeps getting interrupted by a succession of the worst possible people.

First, a random dude shows up and mentions Hina while Chinatsu's in the changing room. The very mention of her name sours Chinatsu's mood and makes her reject a T-shirt she previously liked, confirming her feelings. Then, at the cafe, the would-be couple bumps into Matsuoka, a leery creep who deserves a high-velocity basketball to rearrange his smug facial features. It almost looks like Taiki's self-sacrificial nature gets the best of him, and he capitulates to Matsuoka's invitation for Chinatsu to accompany him to a college basketball game as he trudges home alone, full of regrets.

Chinatsu initially seems willing to be railroaded into going along with Matsuoka, but she's made of sterner stuff, thankfully. My heart almost leaped as high as Taiki's when he sees her join him at the train station. Finally, alone together on a (rather crowded) rooftop viewpoint, as he plucks up the courage to pour out his heart… he's interrupted again. This kind of narrative blue-balling can get tiresome, but at least in this instance it introduces an interesting new character, something of a wild card, in the person of the mysterious Yumeka.

I'm not sure if Yumeka's been mentioned prior to this episode, but from her arrogant smirk and how she paces up and down, sizing up both Taiki and Chinatsu, she's clearly a piece of work. The way she assumes Chinatsu has quit basketball, as she did herself, is telling, and it echoes Matsuoka's manipulative declaration that Taiki doesn't have time for both sports and romance (even if Matsuoka claims this isn't a problem for himself). What is it with these people? They're teenagers! What's wrong with having both? The tension between these two desires is what keeps the show's drama so taut.

Blue Box is the kind of show where I had to go back to my early reviews to remind myself of why I loved it so darn much when it premiered a couple of years back. This is not to say that the series ever became bad. However, my strongest memories of that early season are all connected to how my overwhelmingly positive feelings about Blue Box's art and direction eventually became tempered by just how gosh-darned long it took for Chinatsu and Taiki to even finish a normal conversation with each other, much less develop as a couple. Yes, I know that the show is about much more than just its romantic elements – we're exploring all of the ambition, ennui, competition, uncertainty, maturation, and et cetera that define those final years of high school – but I still want my bittersweet exercises in teenage nostalgia to deliver the lovey-dovey goods that they promise. To recap, after 25 episodes of meticulously drawn and gorgeously animated pining, the emotional “cliffhanger” that concluded Season 1 saw Taiki finally mustering up the nerve to walk right up to Chinatsu and ask her if she would maybe like to go shopping for sports outfits and stuff with him sometime.

So, you can probably understand why I started feeling awfully pessimistic about these kids even progressing to the hand-holding stage before we got to Episode 50. Well, here we are with a brand new season of Blue Box that picks up right where we left off and sends Chinatsu and Taiki off to that shopping maybe-kind-of-sort-of-a-date, and…well, yeah, they're not holding hands yet, but to be honest, I was very pleasantly surprised with how much this premiere still worked for me. The news that we were getting a brand-new director in Daisuke Sakō, along with a new animation studio, made me worry Blue Box would lose some of the visual luster that made it so easy to watch when the story wasn't always pulling its weight. It turns out that the change-up might be the best thing that could have happened to the show.

For one, it still looks lovely, and the storyboarding is still patient enough to let small but emotionally critical moments linger. There is a scene in the changing room where Chinatsu's self-doubt starts to creep in when she overhears Taiki's friend assume that he must be going out with Hina; this feels like an absolutely monumental development when it comes to Chinatsu's own recognition of her feelings for Taiki compared to the last season, and she doesn't have to speak a word. Then there is the comedically tense, awkward sequence where the pair run into the brash, arrogant Kazuma, who straight up tries to get Taiki to scram from his own date so he can muscle in on Chinatsu. I nearly shouted in despair when Taiki was stupid enough to actually let Kazuma's plan work, because God forbid a guy get in the way of Chinatsu and practicing her ball game, but then Chinatsu ends up being the one to run back to meet Taiki at the station so their holy-crap-maybe-this-really-is-a-date doesn't come to an end. I cannot stress enough how satisfying this is to see after Chinatsu spent so much of last season figuring out she had the capacity and desire to have a crush on Taiki in the first place.

Blue Box has always been able to squeeze a preposterous amount of dramatic juice from innocuous shots of hands falling to the side or glances lingering for just a second too long, and nothing has changed in that regard. What has changed, at least in my own perception, is the overall pacing and tone of the direction, which feels maybe ten to fifteen percent lighter and leaner. The best comparison I can make is watching two different cuts of a movie where the overall content is more-or-less identical, but dozens of minor snips and edits in every scene make each version feel markedly different. I would also be remiss not to mention the English dub, which premiered after I finished covering the show in 2025. I think it's great. Zach Aguilar basically sounds exactly like I imagined Taiki would sound, but Xanthe Huynh's Chinatsu might actually be an improvement, because her more straightforward take on the dialogue sands off some of that wistful uncertainty that made Chinatsu such a frustrating character the first time around. Maybe it is because the alchemy behind Blue Box's production has shifted, or maybe it's just that I am feeling refreshed after taking such a long break. Either way, I am thinking we are so back.

I might not have been the biggest fan of the love triangle introduced in season one, but I am very happy Blue Box is building on that to move forward with the main relationship between Chinatsu and Taiki. The two are finally going out and spending some genuine one-on-one time together outside of just training alongside each other at the school gym. Even though their relationship is a focal point, this episode really highlights that they haven't spent much genuine time together. Better late than never, they say? It's not that they don't have some semblance of chemistry, and it's not that I can't see why Taiki might be interested in Chinatsu, but another weakness of Blue Box is that it rarely highlights things from Chinatsu's perspective. Things were brought up to her or introduced around her, but it feels like the show only recently started exploring how other people's opinions of her are starting to affect her.

I like that the main themes of the show were at the core of this season two premiere. The idea of how people perceive you versus who you actually are, feeling insecure about your place in somebody else's life, and trying to balance all the time-demanding activities in your life are front and center. I like the fact that Taiki isn't totally confident in his own words or convictions. He wants a relationship with Chinatsu, but he also acknowledges he still has a long way to go as a badminton player. He's willing to stand his ground, but if he doubts he is contributing something positive to a situation, he will back out. While that can definitely be seen as courteous, it also highlights how unsure of himself he might be. That feels like a very real internal struggle a lot of people go through, and I like how effortlessly this show portrays those feelings.

What's great about this episode, though, is how it sets up and flips the dynamic onto Chinatsu. It's clear that Chinatsu also has insecurities or doubts about whether she can balance all of this stuff in her life. I loved that scene in the changing room where she wanted to show off the shirt she was wearing, but decided to pull back because everyone else still thinks that Taiki should be with somebody else. On the one hand, that highlights how little time these two have spent together, but on the other hand, it also makes Chinatsu second-guess herself. The fact that this episode ends by introducing an old teammate really hammers home the idea that Chinatsu might need to choose between love and basketball, which is poignant even if it is extremely convenient. I can't wait to see how this new character shapes the upcoming arc of the show, especially if it puts Chinatsu in the driver's seat, because more of her perspective will only make the show stronger.